It's time to do laundry again. T-shirts, pants, socks, small children, underwear... Yup, Bob tosses the usual hamper all in to clean. And while the rinse cycle goes on, it's time to... Sit down and watch it. Why? Maybe Bob is a Cloudcuckoolander or even The Ditz. Maybe he sees something shiny or important swirling around inside. Maybe he's just bored. Regardless, Bob decides it's worth his time to watch the washing machine do its job.

This is a fairly Discredited Trope but can still occasionally be seen at laundromats in Real Life. On the other hand, it's a bit of a Coconut Effect in the way that clear-front washing machines are not very common in laundromats as they are usually much newer (and why would a laundromat owner upgrade when their '80s/'90s machines work fine?).

Examples:

Occurs in Yotsuba&!, when she's helping the Ayases clean their house. She becomes intruged by a washer with a door on it's side (her Dad's was a top loader). A little latter, Yotsuba is standing and staring at the washer, thinking it fun.

In a Garfield strip while Jon and Garfield were visiting Jon's family on the farm, Jon and Doc Boy were apparently watching some kind of program, which turns out to be the laundry getting washed in the washing machine with Doc Boy saying "There's goes the red sock again!"

In the Spongebob Squarepants episode "Mid-Life Crustacean", watching laundry at the laundromat is one of Spongebob and Patrick's ideas of a good time--much to the disappointment of tagalong Mr. Krabs, who was hoping for an exciting evening of debauchery to make him feel young again.

In one Mr. Magoo cartoon, Magoo thinks the washing machine is a TV and that the long johns sloshing inside is some guy swimming the English Channel.

In a Garfield strip while Jon and Garfield were visiting Jon's family on the farm, Jon and Doc Boy were apparently watching some kind of program, which turns out to be the laundry getting washed in the washing machine with Doc Boy saying "There's goes the red sock again!"

In the Spongebob Squarepants episode "Mid-Life Crustacean", watching laundry at the laundromat is one of Spongebob and Patrick's ideas of a good time--much to the disappointment of tagalong Mr. Krabs, who was hoping for an exciting evening of debauchery to make him feel young again.

Occurs in Yotsuba&!, when she's helping the Ayases clean their house. She becomes intruged by a washer with a door on it's side (her Dad's was a top loader). A little latter, Yotsuba is standing and staring at the washer, thinking it fun.

This is a fairly Discredited Trope but can still occasionally be seen at laundromats in Real Life. On the other hand, it's a bit of a Coconut Effect in the way that clear-front washing machines are not very common in laundromats as they are usually much newer (and why would a laundromat owner upgrade when their '80s/'90s machines work fine?).

Live TV/Music:- Neil Innes in Rutland Weekend Television and its successor series The Innes Book of Records performed a song called "Front Loader, a parody of Stevie Wonder's "Superstition", featuring a single, lonely, and rather nerdy university undergrad doing his laundry in a public laundromat. In the later version, Innes' nerdy Cannot Talk To Women student has an erotic fantasy about a girl also in the laundry. He ignores the fact she is being smiling and friendly in real life, and imagines her stripping for him: he sees this in the washer door as if it were a TV. Unfortunately, the bits he's never seen in real life end up being blacked out as her bra and pants come off....

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